superstition

"The superstitious
man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant." --Voltaire

A superstition is a false belief based on ignorance (e.g., if we don't beat
the drums during an eclipse, the evil demon won't return the sun to the
sky), fear of the unknown (e.g., if we don't chop up this chicken in just
the right way and burn it according to tradition while uttering just the
right incantations then the rain won't come and our crops won't grow and
we'll starve), trust in magic (e.g., if I put spit or dirt on my
beautiful child who has been praised, the effects of the
evil eye will be averted), trust in chance (if I open this book randomly and let my finger fall
to any word that word will guide my future actions), or some other false
conception of causation (e.g.,
homeopathy,
therapeutic touch,
vitalism, creationism, or that I'll have good luck if I carry a rabbit's
foot or bad luck if a black cat crosses my path).

The indiscriminate power of nature is obvious. For as
long as humans have been making sounds and instruments, magical methods have
been created in the attempt to control the forces of nature and the life and
death matters of daily existence. Good and evil befall us without rhyme or
reason. We imagine spirits or intelligible forces causing our good and bad
fortune. We invent ways to placate them or direct them. Many of the
superstitions we developed seemed to work because we didn't know how to
properly evaluate them. There are many instances of selective thinking that
might lead to a superstitious belief that something is good or bad luck, for
example. The
"curse of Pele" exemplifies this kind of superstition. According to one
website devoted to the legend of the Hawaiian goddess Pele:

It is well known to locals on the island
of Hawaii, that there is a curse upon those who take one of Pele's lava
rocks. It is said that he who takes a lava rock, is taking something from
Pele and shall receive bad luck because of it. In the old days people were
said to die from the curse, but now you only receive bad luck.

Every day, Hawaii Volcanoes
National Park receives several rocks from people who took
them home from the park and are returning them because of the bad luck
they've had since taking the rocks. Many of these people think there is a
causal connection between their taking the rocks and their perceived bad
luck because their bad luck came after they took the rocks. Of course, their
perceived bad luck may have happened even if they hadn't taken any rocks
from the park. Or they may not have paid much attention to the "bad luck"
had they not heard there was a curse associated with taking the rocks. Such
people may not reflect on the fact that it would be a rare person who would
go through life without any "bad luck," so the likelihood that after taking
the rock nothing bad would ever happen in their lives is about zero. Also, nobody
knows how many people have taken
rocks and have not had any noticeable change in their luck. Such
people are not likely to notify the Park Service of their lack of bad
fortune. Nor are those who have
had a run of good fortune after taking rocks likely to announce it to the world, since it is illegal to take
home rocks as souvenirs. Selective perception, selective memory,
post hoc reasoning, and the
tendency to confirmation
bias will solidify the superstition.

Athletes
are notoriously superstitious. They engage in irrational pre-game rituals such as praying to an almighty being
to help their team win or eating chicken to help with getting hits (Wade
Boggs). Many have superstitions about not washing their clothing after a
win or loss or wearing certain numbers. Some wear a
talisman, such as a holy medal or lucky shamrock. They believe in "lucky" bats or
shirts.

[new]
Anyone watching the 2010 World Series
between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers saw many
players, especially pitchers, wearing one or more necklaces. Pitcher
Randy Johnson brought the fad to the U.S. in 2002 when he discovered that many
Japanese baseball players were wearing them. The necklaces are now worn by
hundreds of professional baseball players
who think they give them energy, improve circulation, and reduce
muscle stress. The necklaces are "twisted ropes permeated with
aqua titanium" and are manufactured by Phiten. Scott McDonald, a Seattle-based
sales and marketing representative for Phiten, says that "everybody has
electricity running through their bodies" and "this product stabilizes that
flow of electricity if you're stressed or tired. Pitchers are seeing that
they aren't as sore." Whatever. Of course, the company has plenty
of testimonials, but no scientific evidence that their product
is anything but a head game. Business is brisk. Phiten sells
dozens of products that are attractive to many professional
basketball players and golfers, as well as baseball players. All
of these products seem to have titanium in them and whether it
be a piece of jewelry, a cream, or a tape the product is backed
by pseudoscientific jargon:

Bioelectric current is disturbed by stress
and fatigue caused by the hectic pace of modern life. Realign your vital
current with this tape coated with Carbonized Titanium. Use these discs to
help pinpoint specific areas - their small size makes it convenient to keep
on hand.

Nobody ever went broke overestimating the
gullibility of professional athletes. Phiten, based in Torrance, California,
has been an official Major League Baseball licensee since 2007. [/new]

Gamblers are also notoriously superstitious. They're likely to think
that a slot machine "is due" or that a particular machine or dealer is their
"lucky machine" or "lucky dealer."

Superstitious beliefs are
universal. Every culture has its irrational causal beliefs, but some
cultures are exceeding superstitious even in the 21st century. For example,
the use of astrologers is still widespread in
India,
a country with many superstitions.*

Some Chinese gamblers even avoid certain hotel room numbers like "58"
(sounds similar to "won't prosper" in Cantonese) or "4" (sounds similar to
"die" in Cantonese) and choose positive hotel room numbers like "18"
(sounds similar to "will definitely prosper" in Cantonese) or "84" (sounds
similar to "prosperous until death" in Cantonese).*

Four is an unlucky number in Japan, Korea, and Hawaii. The word for 4,
shi, is homophonous with the word for
death.

Thirteen is considered an unlucky number to some people in the U.S.
Others consider thirteen a lucky number.

Many professions have developed their own superstitions but this is not
the place to try to list them all because to do so would bring bad luck.

The driving force behind seeing
patterns where there are none is hidden in the mists of natural selection.
We've evolved to see patterns and this natural tendency often leads us to
see many false causal connections. The main driving forces behind superstition are ignorance and fear of the unknown
or
unpredictable.
Superstitious beliefs give us the illusion of control over events that we don't
understand. With our superstitious beliefs and practices, we try to control
things that aren't even known to be controllable.

Many religious believers correctly see other religions as full of superstitions.
The foundation of one religion is considered base superstition by another.*
Religious superstitions give us the illusion of power over important life
and death matters. All we need do is utter prayers, or chant, or dance with
our feathers pointed in the right direction and we can overcome sickness and
death, bring on good luck and ward off evil. We have invisible allies in the sky, the air, the earth. We can call
on them when the going gets rough. They give us power and make us feel
strong, at least until the next tsunami wipes out a few thousand
unsuspecting people in a matter of hours. Of course, we are so clever that
we have superstitions to explain the failure of our superstitions. We didn't
do the ritual properly or we didn't have enough faith
in our spirits or we've been too evil to deserve protection or we misplaced
a comma in the transcription of our sacred scriptures.

Sometimes superstitions may contain a grain of truth. For example, the
belief in maternal impressions was deemed a
superstition in the early twentieth century, but it is now taken for granted
that a fetus can be significantly affected by the mother's physical and
emotional experiences. And, if you believe the gypsy who predicted you
would die at 43 is correct, your anxiety might well contribute to your early
death, fulfilling the prophecy.

Priest rids house of fire demon The exorcist "laid out his
apparatus, saying he would be using a religious candle, holy water and oil,
and incense to rid the house of its evil spirit." This was not in some
backward medieval village in 1325, but in Zambia in May 2010. The evil
spirit is even identified as "a spiteful relative" who burns their
furniture. "During the final tour of the house, Father Mike also stopped to
make the sign of the cross at the windows and doors." He then crossed his
fingers, knocked on wood, and spat three times into the wind.

They [Damisch et al.]
also found this improved performance effect was partly explained
by improved “self efficacy assessment” and partly by increased
task persistence. Subjects were more confident and they engaged
in the task more. If true that could mean that belief in
superstitions may provide a specific selective advantage, and
not just be a side effect of our psychological makeup.

To make things more
interesting, other research indicates a small tendency for
superstitious beliefs to correlate with a lower self-efficacy
assessment. So superstitious people may have lower confidence at
baseline. But what is the cause and effect? Do superstitions
arise in people with low confidence as a compensatory mechanism,
or does belief in superstitions cause lower confidence – perhaps
a surrendering of control to the magical agent? Both directions
of causation could be at work in a self-reinforcing effect.